f"Obama campaigned for the presidency quite explicitly as a warmonger in regards to Afghanistan, although his constant claim to have opposed the Iraq war left many voters with the false impression that he was less bellicose than Bush. In reality, Obama was always adamant about his desire to bomb and invade Pakistan in pursuit of the phantomatic “Osama bin Laden.” Barone comments: ‘It would be ironic if the professorial Barack Obama launches a military attack when his supposedly cowboy predecessor George W. Bush declined to do so….But I take it seriously when … nonhawks Joe Klein and Walter Russell Meade say Obama might bomb Iran."

The thrust of today’s talks in Jordan between George Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is clear in advance. Bush, accompanied by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will insist that the Iraqi leader bow down to US demands for a bloody crackdown against the largest faction in his own government, the anti-occupation Sadrist movement headed by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and its Mahdi Army militia. An unnamed senior US official bluntly told the New York Times: “It’s decision time and everybody knows it.”

The incompetence of the Bush planners has led to a catastrophe in Iraq.. The US administration may face a nightmare, a loose Shiite alliance that controls the greatest energy supplyt in the world and builds close ties to the Shanghai group.

America will be more secure the sooner Rumsfeld resigns.. In an historical sense, the term "islam fascism" is absurd, a contradiction in itself..The fascism reproach is not true for any of the Moslem groups resisting Anglo-American control of the Middle East.

At a pro-Israel rally organized by L.A.'s Simon Wiesenthal Center, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made clear his support for the Israeli bombings of Gaza and Lebanon (Photo: AFP/Hassan Ammar - What if this was your mother? A wounded Lebanese woman, covered in blood, is evacuated after surviving an Israeli air strike in Tyre, south Lebanon.)

Bombings and assassinations continue in Lebanon. The latest victim of this wave of terror was the 67-year old George Hawi, who was killed when a bomb detonated in his car; the former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party lost his life on June 21st, only a day after the so-called “anti-Syrian bloc” claimed victory in the parliamentary elections.